If the Truth Kills them, let them Die

By Ana Hurtado on September 2, 2024 from Havana

Us. We revolutionaries, of Cuba and the world, if there is something we have to have, it is clarity. The enemy mutates, the context as well, but always behind it is the same background: to overthrow the Cuban Revolution.They want Cuba because they cannot have it. Because they know that no matter how hard they try to dirty it, socialism works. It has been working for 65 years in spite of a blockade that suffocates a people, who from the very first moment they want to starve it to death.

But as Deputy Assistant Secretary Lester Mallory said in 1960: “the people love Castro” and so it continues to be. A love and admiration with more strength than an entourage of Spartans.

It is nothing new to anyone that the empire does not want the people to know that there are alternatives. In which the human being is at the center and matters more than money and possessions. Alternatives so dangerous for imperialism that they try to destroy them and they cannot because one thing is clear: the strength, in any situation of any caliber, is in the hands of the people.

Subcomandante Marcos said that he was subcomandante because the people were the comandante. That the people ordered that he would be there, at their service. One glorious morning on January 1, 1994, the world woke up to the news of the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Chiapas.

Largely made up of members of indigenous peoples, the EZLN did not accept what was to be the new North American Free Trade Agreement.

What was to become of the poor of the land, of the peasants and proletarians?

That first of January they took San Cristóbal de las Casas, among other towns, and declared war on the Mexican state. After twelve days of combat, they began to approach the executive through dialogue in order to later – the Zapatista movement at the end of the 20th century – finally abandon their weapons. To commit themselves peacefully to transform reality by promoting social changes and improvements.

Many leftist movements worldwide were enthusiastic about this twelve-day revolution. It became attractive and even influenced a variety of subsequent struggles. It is undoubtedly a movement worthy of admiration, but in my opinion, without delving into the nature of the EZLN, I allow myself to compare it to what I believe is a true Revolution.

To revolutionize or transform something, one must have clear priorities and convictions. You have to have strong leadership and never lose heart. During my university years I was very interested in this phenomenon and in that January 1, 1994.

But I have come to a conclusion: they wanted to go from the particular to the general. The ultimate (and worthy) goal they had was the revolutionary transformation into a socialist Mexico.

And the thing is that when you are going to change something, you have to aspire from the first moment to the greatest change, making clear the manifesto of ideas. We have to ask for everything. You can’t save a kilo of apples if one of them rots and the pieces are cut off in bad condition. You have to pull out the one that is rotten at the root, even if you lose it, because it will slowly spoil the others.

Revolutions, when you take a firm step, are to be made here and now.

It was unfortunate that Marcos and his people did not get what they wanted, a disappointment perhaps for many. But they forget that Cuba still exists and that is where we have to look.

The world is witnessing the emergence of repugnant leftists. Political projects that will remain in the dunghill of history as traitors to peoples who are victims of the most savage capitalism. People who stain the memory of those who gave their lives before.

And the empire knows it. It knows that the only thing it cannot control, supervise or defeat is socialism. Where is socialism? It is in Cuba.

With things to be perfected, with errors to be improved upon, but it is there. It does not kneel on the ground before any imperial design and it moves forward, with the noose around its neck, but nevertheless it does so.

And socialism is not a national idea, but an international one. Therefore, it is an ethical and moral obligation to support of any revolutionary, in any geography. It is an obligation to assume the consequences for having held one’s head high. It is also an obligation not to forget the enemy. An enemy that has been mutating, transforming, camouflaging itself. But which is as constant as the strength and resistance of this people.

Because the Revolution is the social access of individuals coming together. It is the hope that it is worth fighting for something better. If people feel that they no longer have social access, they become disinterested in politics and begin to consume banal content in their lives that the empire introduces into the agendas of people in other countries. Their aspirations change, their ends become mediocre. They stop thinking. And thinking is what damages hegemony. Thinking is the war to be waged.

When people are part of a participatory system, it generates a level of consciousness in them that is the main weapon to prevent external agents from defeating them. That is what the Cuban Revolution achieved in its first years.

Strengthening the people’s imagination, their spectrum of aspirations and putting individual and general dignity as a shield.

Dignity is not quantifiable but when it is there it is noticeable from afar. When you have it and begin to feel it, you begin to think differently about yourself, about society and to value your capabilities as a person, as an element of transformation.

We have to reach a level of consciousness that allows us to understand that life is not only about our ideology or how we think. But how we put that ideology into practice and how we behave.

To know that having a job is not only for eating and dressing ourselves, but to be able to participate in and with society. To be autonomous as men and women. And free of thought.

To know also that freedom is not only action but a discipline to be able to exercise it without doing harm around us.

Socialism knows all this, although it has yet to finish. It is not a path of years, perhaps centuries. You just have to want to be inside the process to become agents of transformation of the unjust, of the hegemonic. Of the lie.

Because above all we have the truth, a human interpretation of reality that although it may not be absolute, it is the truth of the poor and the humble.

And as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant thought, if the truth kills them, we will let them die with it and from it.

Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English